It’s Not Funny Anymore

“We will buy the motherland. Cheaply.” Ads that seemed like a stupid joke and an unsuccessful hoax yesterday are a generous offer today, suggesting a mutually beneficial partnership with American intelligence services to all who desire.

Russian hackers have sounded like figures in a Russian fable about meddling in U.S. elections for the past few years, whether they have broken into the email accounts of American politicians or dispatched a campaign-destroying virus to the computer of Hillary Clinton, causing the puzzled to smile and ask, are you serious?

They are, of course, serious. And they will scour to the end in search of the Russian hacker’s mysterious soul, and if they do not find it, they will gladly make it up. Besides, they will carry on all the more so that they will have an abundance of volunteer hackers, mainly at the cost of American taxpayers.

Residents of several Russian cities received a message on Aug. 6 from the U.S. State Department offering up to $10 million for information regarding meddling in the U.S. election, and providing a contact number for information. The link that followed took one to the State Department’s official “Rewards for Justice” program site. All of the messages were sent through a service used for delivering spam.

Our first thought was that we were hacked! Russian hackers are almighty, work personally for Vladimir Putin and, on the threshold of the presidential election involving Donald Trump, are prepared to conduct the most devious provocation. The messages, including those sent to deputies from United Russia, Putin’s political party, might have been taken as a joke if the official U.S. State Department website had not published a release explaining in detail how and where one could receive millions in exchange for “information regarding meddling in the U.S. election” the day before, Aug. 5.

To be fair, it is necessary to recognize that everything is completely normal when a country, whether it is the U.S., China, Germany, France or Russia, tries to find cracks in their political infrastructure and protect their respective countries from interference by foreign policy institutions in domestic elections.

It is quite a different matter when the intelligence agency of an unfriendly government, to put it lightly, with its security doctrines that consider Russia the biggest enemy of humanity, openly suggest to Russians (we will call things as they are) they sell their motherland and hand over their compatriots, while at the same time one clearly remembers that “Russian hackers” are nothing but the product of Robert Mueller, Mike Pompeo and Trump’s weak imagination.

It is important to remember that Russia has repeatedly offered to help capture these elusive “Russian hackers,” and that America has declined these offers to cooperate every time. It is completely clear why.

The crude work of American intelligence agencies, however, is not as useless as it seems at first glance. Whole legions of citizens live in Russia who can already envision NATO troops crossing their country’s borders and settling in along the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Such recruitment of people willing to share information is not difficult. The newly recruited informers will joyfully head through the American Embassy’s open doors and talk endlessly.

These messages from the State Department, with their request to share “information regarding meddling in the U.S. election,” as with the whole story of “Russian hackers,” are a clear call to those fighting against the “bloody regime.” The message they seem to proclaim is simple: “We are waiting for you, so come soon. The recruiting season is open for new informants.”

In Russia, like in any other country, including the U.S., one will find small groups of people who think “The X-Files” is a documentary series and “Russian hackers” are Putin’s new fighters in developing nations’ cyberwar against the righteous United States that brings democracy and happiness to the world.

These comrades, obsessed with hatred of their own country, act to spite the regime and will prove it for a pretty penny. They’ll prove that Mikhail Efremov, a Russian actor recently arrested for drunk driving which led to a fatal car crash, was actually asleep in a narcotic stupor at home at the time of the accident, and that Ella Pamfilova, the current chairwoman of the Central Election Commission of Russia, was enlisted by the Main Intelligence Directorate (the Soviet Union’s military intelligence agency) in her first year at the Moscow Energy Institute, and at this very second is openly and personally giving out new orders to “Russian hackers.”

The Americans then, if we are being honest, do not need truth, concrete evidence or anything else except unfounded accusations and the crazy testimony of eyewitnesses. It’s worth repeating that there will be many eyewitnesses. The best denouncer of the treacherous authoritarian regime may be Alexei Navalny (the most prominent Russian opposition leader advocating against Vladimir Putin), shuffling ballots in American ballot boxes, and who has been working for the U.S. indirectly for quite a long time.

It is not by chance that in Navalny’s forgotten “Five Steps for Russia” coronavirus plan, one of the main points appeared to be the immediate disarmament of Russia, immediately following the point about distribution of money from the Russian government to citizens (which would sharply increase inflation and devalue Russians’ savings).

A weak Russia—that is exactly what the entire West craves. The methods of American intelligence agencies have not changed in the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prior to that, Soviet dissidents were seduced with chewing gum, jeans, popular films such as the 1974 movie “Emmanuelle” and golden bank notes which could be lavishly spent at Beryozka, the Soviet retail store. Today, the stakes have risen, but, in contrast with the U.S., Russia has strongly changed over the last 15 to 20 years and will no longer pity itself incessantly out of adversity and grief.